- If, like me, you feel like you’re losing touch with underground beats -maybe you were never in touch to begin with?- don’t worry. Kat Martin, Good Samaritron and in fact a huge chunk of Australia’s leftfield beats scene are here to help you out, with an armful of Aussy Bangers.
Kat Martin, for the uninitiated, is an underground electronic luminary, hailing from Brisbane and such lauded outfits as Brainbeau and X in O. Good Samaritron is her own label, which was originally a vehicle for putting out her own music. More recently it has widened its purview and started releasing compilations of antipodean electronica. Aussy Bangers is actually the second plus-sized collection from Good Samaritron, the first being Unusual Suspects, released late in 2018 and comprised exclusively of Brisbane talent. On Aussy Bangers -as the name suggests- Kat has cast her net wider, to catch tracks from artists spread around the nation.
Kat introduces the selection as “danceable yet squelchy and weird as they come” which seems like a good way of describing some elements here, especially near the beginning, but the comp proves to be slightly more diverse than that as it progresses. Actually the very first number, A/S/L’s I’ll Never brings the banger we were promised with a straight-up future bass cut, then Nina Buchanan sets the tone for the next few numbers with Ring, offering up some angular speeding, bass-heavy techno and a lead line that sounds like it’s played on a bandsaw; at a minute-thirty, it’s brilliant but over all too quickly. Telekenet’s Perpeterol takes roughly the same ingredients and moulds them into what sounds like a reimagining of a ‘90’s drum’n’bass rhythm and the same could be said of Raymond Scott Walker’s scruffy, mutant jungle cut, Crunch Time. I haven’t heard from Collapsicon in a while and it proves to be a happy reunion with atmospheric electro accompanying a fairly successful attempt to recreate the voice of Shodan, one of videogames’ more iconic villains.
Up till now I sort of feel unstuck in time, but Raus makes it feel more like 2019 with the dance-trap of Propheteer. Dust Storm Jogger (Kat’s co-conspirator Chelvis Chesley from Brainbeau) pulls it back into future bass and it’s a blast. The bass speeds and the tinny treble features a choppy, repetitive rhythm reminiscent of footwork.
I guess it’s appropriate that Brainbeau’s cut, Sooo, comes next (closely followed by X in O) and it slowly surfaces out of more of those vaguely latin sounding rhythms, before Kat’s vocal appears on top. Is it a bit cheeky to give yourself just about the sweetest cut here? I don’t know about that, but I do know that it’s a little pop gem. The sweetness stays strong: see Steaming Jeans' crystaline synthwave cut Infinity for evidence. It’s likably paired with the no-wave funk of The Magic Busker by The Person.
The night gets darker and it’s nice to hear the industrial dance / electroclash of Grace Stevenson’s Rebel Yell make an appearance, in a live version of Action. Gods! What a mover. The DIY darkwave of V’s Stranger makes a suitable partner.
Adelaide’s Little Scale contributes a brief but epic dancefloor operator, with its rhythms teetering precariously as they thunder along, almost imperceptibly speeding then slowing and moving slightly out of phase with each other. It feels like the end of Aussy Bangers is the time to break out the most mutant disco sounds, those which didn’t go elsewhere. Yet they all maintain an admirable focus on the dancefloor, even Horse Macgyver’s contribution, Ltd Time Ltd Health which comes as close to oldschool IDM as anything here. That's before the inimitable Scraps rolls in with an instrumental remix in place of the closing credits music.
Maybe I’m not as out of touch as I thought, because this reasonably broad overview of Australia’s underground beats is kind of what I expected, but, hearteningly, there’s so much of it and it makes a highly danceable and listenable collage, from shore to sunny shore. Thanks Kat Martin for making the journey so that we can too.
- Chris Cobcroft.